Wireless piconets are widely used to allow short-range, ad-hoc wireless communications between adjacent terminals. Bluetooth is a well known short-range wireless piconet standard that can allow many terminals to be connected together in a short-range ad-hoc piconet. For example, Bluetooth-enabled terminals are widely used to allow a headset to wirelessly communicate with a mobile telephone, a mobile telephone to communication through a vehicle sound system, and for terminals to exchange digital audio, pictures, and/or video data.
In a short-range wireless piconet, one terminal generally operates as a master device, and one or more other terminals operate as slave devices. For example, the Bluetooth headset may be a slave, whereas the mobile telephone, vehicle sound system, digital audio device, computer, PDA, etc., may be the master.
Because terminals that are communicating through a short-range wireless piconet are located relatively close to one another, moving the terminals small distances relative to one another can result in significant changes in the strength of the communication signals that they receive from each other. In an attempt to compensate for changes in received signal strength, some Bluetooth terminals are configured to control the transmission power level of each other via their exchange of power control commands. Existing power control processes may not sufficiently control power levels when the terminals are rapidly moved relative to each other, and which can result in loss of communication links between the terminals.